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Games can be more than mere entertainment. In our column Alt+Home, intermedia artist Kent Sheely explores the ways independent developers are challenging the status quo, creating brand new experiences, and making a difference in the world.

October is an important time for the brave souls who spend the 30 days leading up to Halloween indulging in as much spine-tingling, heart-pounding horror as they can survive. Every year I like to set aside some time to play some of the spooky indie games I haven’t yet had the chance to savor, but with so many to choose from across so many various outlets, it can be a daunting task just figuring out where to look! If you’ve got a full schedule and just don’t have time to choose, not to worry; I’ve picked out a selection of my favorites, and I’ll tell you why I think they’re worth adding a few gray hairs to your head.

Games can be more than mere entertainment. In our column Alt+Home, intermedia artist Kent Sheely explores the ways independent developers are challenging the status quo, creating brand new experiences, and making a difference in the world.

Nostalgia is an incredible force of nature. It drives people to collect Star Wars figurines, binge through Quantum Leap on Netflix, and sing along with old Christmas carols in their local supermarket. Longing for the feeling of things remembered drives the film industry to churn out dozens of blockbuster movies every year that are reimagined and “upgraded” renditions of classics, presented using the latest technologies, aiming to give their target audience some semblance of the warm feelings they remember from their younger days. These are known, of course, as “remakes.”

Games can be more than mere entertainment. In our column Alt+Home intermedia artist Kent Sheely explores the ways independent developers are challenging the status quo.

The subject of in-game photography has been addressed at-length, not least here on this very site, gamers and artists alike having long ago discovered the potential for turning their screens into a camera lens for capturing stunning images of the artificial worlds they inhabit. This is a natural development, as the rectangular format of the screen already lends itself to the form factor of a photograph. Entire blogs and exhibitions have been curated based on the idea, which in itself raises questions about the nature of photography & what sets a real photograph apart from a virtual one. Duncan Harris has made a name for himself by taking stunningly well-composed screenshots using a number of different modifications and tools.

Artists such as Robert Overweg have even gone beyond merely capturing images of the game world as it’s presented and attempt to catch games in glitched states, depicting the inner workings behind the facade. The argument about whether screenshots can be art has long since been put to rest, but the way games approach the concept continues to evolve and give us new ways of approaching this documentary practice in interactive media.

Games can be more than mere entertainment. In our column Alt+Home, this time, intermedia artist Kent Sheely explores the ways video games can be played against their creators' intentions.

If you've never played any of the Call of Duty series, there are two details you should know. First, these games are typical first-person shooters, which means you will likely mow down a few hundred enemies before the credits roll. Second, they are presented as highly cinematic experiences, in which a lot of combat and action is happening around you at all times, most of which is tertiary to your character’s goals and is present only as atmospheric context. You are meant to feel like just an ordinary soldier within the ranks of a larger force. However, because you are the protagonist of the story, you’re expected to be on the front lines doing a lot of the dirty work yourself if you're playing as intended.

Games can be more than mere entertainment. In our column Alt+Home, intermedia artist Kent Sheely explores the ways independent developers are challenging the status quo, creating brand new experiences, and making a difference in the world.

I don’t do a lot of driving. I’ve lived in New York City for the past six years, relying mostly on public transit, and haven’t spent a lot of time behind the wheel. However, I just finished moving all the way across the country to Los Angeles, a road trip that more than made up for that gap.

On long stretches of American highway I had a lot of time to reflect, and I thought quite a lot about games that simulate the experience of driving. There’s certainly no shortage of these, but most treat the vehicle and its occupant(s) as a single entity, as if the player were controlling an autonomous machine. In my own experience, it’s easy to focus my attention entirely on guiding a 7,500-pound vessel between the endless white lines, but simple actions like reaching for a strip of beef jerky or changing the radio make me acutely aware that in those moments I am effectively two entities.

A handful of games in recent years have explored this duality, challenging the player to consider both the vehicle and the driver within as individual elements.

Games can be more than mere entertainment. In our column Alt+Home, intermedia artist Kent Sheely explores the ways independent developers are challenging the status quo, creating brand new experiences, and making a difference in the world.

The video game industry stands astride a long, sordid history of plagiarism that stretches all the way back to when games were first starting to become a commercially viable industry. In 1981, a company called Holniker released Meteors, a game that so closely resembled Atari’s Asteroids that Atari attempted to sue the other company for copyright infringement. Although the court found more than 20 distinct similarities between the two titles, it ultimately did not award damages to Atari, stating that game mechanics and rules could not be trademarked and the visual appearance of Meteors was distinct enough to set it apart from its predecessor. This court precedent laid the foundation for numerous subsequent cases, in which game developers and publishers managed to squeeze their reproductions into the industry right next to the titles upon which they had based their own work.

Games can be more than mere entertainment. This time, for a special summer edition of his column Alt+Home , intermedia artist Kent Sheely takes video game tourism to another level and goes bird-watching in Skyrim.

There are a staggering number of games that include birds as elements of their worlds, usually as background ambience or environmental nuances that most players will never consciously notice. Even in a lot of cases where birds are rendered as objects with which players can interact, these hapless creatures are dangled as soft targets that will rake in a handful of points when shot, or to provide comic relief through well-placed poops. Birds are overlooked and underrepresented as subject material and as playable characters, so I decided it was time to take a stand and turn that around. I immersed myself in a modified version of one of the most popular open-world games ever made, Bethesda’s Skyrim, and documenting its feathered fauna in a way that would do them justice.

Games can be more than mere entertainment. In our column Alt+Home, intermedia artist Kent Sheely explores the ways independent developers are challenging the status quo, creating brand new experiences, and making a difference in the world.

A lot of the games I played as a kid gave me the creeps, despite--or rather, due to--their simplicity. One of the first games that I remember having this effect was Sleuth for MS-DOS, a thriller in the style of a “whodunnit”-style mystery. Its graphics were entirely composed of alphanumeric characters and symbols, and all context and dialogue were delivered through on-screen descriptions, yet when the status window would announce “the murderer is now stalking you,” I would feel a genuine sense of fear. Even campy titles like Haunted House for the Atari had the power to spook me, simply because their limited graphics and sounds let my imagination run wild, the single-color objects and electronic sounds inspiring nightmarish scenarios in my mind.

Games can be more than mere entertainment. In our column Alt+Home, intermedia artist Kent Sheely explores the ways independent developers are challenging the status quo, creating brand new experiences, and making a difference in the world.

The Magnavox Odyssey, which made its debut in 1972, was the first video game console released to the public. It was exceptionally crude by modern standards, relying on translucent overlay sheets placed onto the screen of the television to provide context for the rudimentary graphics. Every game was governed by a handful of illuminated bars whose movements were controlled by either the game controllers or by simple program routines calculated within the console. The Odyssey itself shipped with other tactile components such as poker chips, dice, and pre-printed score sheets, which made it seem much more like an adaptable board game than a video game console; a large portion of the gameplay was moderated by the players.

Games can be more than mere entertainment. In our new column Alt+Home, intermedia artist Kent Sheely explores the ways independent developers are challenging the status quo, creating brand new experiences, and making a difference in the world.

In public service communities, such as those based on political activism, social work, and counseling, close empathetic attachment is a requirement for being good at the job. The ability to be compassionate and attentive to the needs of others is a wonderful gift, but often comes with the cost of personal well-being; thus, having a regimen of activities that allow the psyche to rest and recover is a necessary tool for making sure one’s own emotional batteries stay charged. This practice is generally known as “self-care,” and can entail any number of exercises, mental or physical, that keep the individual in good mental condition. Even for people who don’t work in the aforementioned areas, such activities can be invaluable for combating daily stress and psychological drain.